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The $8M grant, given by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, will support a project in which the research team will use bioengineered stem cells and tissue to create a functional heart patch. The patch will restore function and prevent heart failure that can be caused by a heart attack's damage.

Liver disease and heart disease are two common ailments Americans suffer from. One in ten Americans suffers from liver disease, and heart disease is the leading cause of death in the country. The prominence of these diseases makes them common topics for life science research. Researchers from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey recently found a connection between an antioxidant and liver and heart disease.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently launched a new network of institutions - called the Centers for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG) - which will study common conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and autism to see how genetics and DNA contribute to the risk of these diseases. The McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis is one of four institutions involved in this network and will be receiving $60 million over the next four years to study genomics and common diseases.

The Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics provides annual funding to researchers at the University of Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic, and the state of Minnesota dedicated to bioscience research. Since its founding in 2003, the Minnesota Partnership has worked to strengthen Minnesota's bioresearch fields and help elevate the state as a respected research center. (Image courtesy of Bsstu via Wikimedia Commons).

Everyone wants to live healthier, if only to avoid the distress and danger of having serious problems like diabetes and blocked arteries. Unfortunately that's not always enough to get Americans to eat better, even when they know what's at stake. Last month a much publicized study in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that a "Mediterranean diet" is a clear winner for heart health, but try wrestling a steak away from a Texan with the lure of olive oil, nuts, and fruit instead. That's why University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio (UTHSCSA) research scientist Reto Asmis is studying the biochemical basis of the Mediterranean diet with the aim of producing a food supplement that does what the healthy diet does without a wholesale change in our eating behavior.

Washington University in St Louis (WUSTL) has just received a $2M research grant that will go towards combating a disorder which afflicts, often fatally, nearly 5.8 million Americans each year: heart failure. Heart failure is one of the leading causes of death in the US and although many promising drugs have been introduced over the years, we have yet to find a definitive treatment for the variety of cases that doctors encounter. This $2M NIH award wil go to a team of WUSTL scientists for basic research that will contribute to our understanding of heart disease and ideally lead to more effective treatment. The end goal of this research project is the design and construction of artificial tissue models of the heart, which will allow scientists to more quickly and efficiently test new drugs.

Led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the six-week MyHeartMap Challenge is a trial science research project that uses crowd-sourcing to locate and gather information about automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) in Philadelphia. The challenge runs from January 31 to March 13, during which time participants can use a free app on their iPhones or Android phones to take pictures and document the location of publicly accessible AEDs in Philadelphia.